"Hello Uncle, the particulars needed are not necessary, please don't bring" are my first words uttered to a Tahsildar Uncle on a 1927 evolutionary rotary phone and my euphoria was nothing compared to or less than Graham Bell testing out his short-range phone in 1876 in his Boston laboratory, when he rang his assistant Thomas Watson, and become well known-for saying, “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you".
We lived in a then semi-urban place called Mangalore and this rotary phone was in a small restaurant called Gajanan Restaurant, more than two kilometres away from our dwelling place. I still remember sprinting faster than P.T. Usha, at a breakneck speed to reach the small restaurant in minutes. I felt on top of the world when I accomplished my task though breathlessly and I used only two words "particulars" and "necessary" in English and rest was in Konkani, our mother tongue. English was a second language taught from 6th class onwards and I was a 7th class middle school student then.
Phones, like people have evolved throughout history, transformed from a Short-range, Candlestick, Rotary, Touch-dial, First Mobile, Cordless, First Portable, Nokia, First Camera, Crack-berry (BlackBerry), Sleek Mobile Design (Motorola Razr), Smartphone to a Cue in iPhone 3G. iPhone did pave the way for manufacturers of cell phones to create their own version of the smartphones to cater to human lifestyles and needs, an useful mode of communication which quite often is being misused by a large majority of human race.
The simple thrill of speaking on borrowed or owning a rotary phone later has never been able to replace it by the smartphone that I own now. Centuries apart, I wonder what Graham Bell's reaction could be to his first creative idea from wherever he is, if he could communicate.
